Obi: Can Corporate Logic, Ethical Posturing Fix Nigeria?
By Arafat A. Abdulrazaq
Peter Obi’s July 6, 2025 appearance on Channels TV’s Sunday Politics stirred familiar emotions and fired up his support base. He spoke passionately about competence, order, agriculture, insecurity, and national development—particularly in the North. He condemned waste and extolled frugality. But beneath the charisma and conviction, Obi’s interview brought more questions than answers: Did we listen to a presidential contender offering real solutions or a savvy businessman branding a product?
Obi’s narrative needs to be dissected beyond political sentiments and emotions, and into the realm of policy, governance, and national realities.
Obi’s repeated focus on the North – Benue, Niger, and the broader region, was no coincidence. It’s a region with both strategic electoral weight and acute developmental challenges. By promising to transform agriculture and restore security in the region, Obi was clearly making a political calculation.
His rhetoric, “I will change the narrative of the North”, is inspiring. Yet, the challenges he cites are neither new nor easily solvable. The farmer-herder conflict, banditry, and the collapse of rural farming are rooted in decades of land disputes, climate change, poverty, and weak institutions. To promise sweeping change in a single tenure, without concrete frameworks or timelines, is to risk oversimplification.
Obi declined to mention what exactly he would do differently or better from what the current administration is doing. He didn’t acknowledge the fact that there is the Ministry of Livestock Development now that is tackling the herders’ crisis. A world-class infrastructure was recently erected in Gombe state and it is meant to cater for the needs of herders and their families and reduce conflict with farmers. Governor Inuwa Yahaya publicly hailed the present federal government for the unprecedented investment which offers far-reaching solutions to identified problems.
Obi didn’t say whether this is good enough or whether there is a way to do better. He just kept on repeating the same populist lines without specifics. He also talked about funding education amidst high poverty level, again, without specific alternatives to what the present administration is doing. He didn’t say if the student loan policy of the present administration is good or bad and if he is going to scrap it or improve on it.
When asked if he would consider being Atiku Abubakar’s running mate again, Obi’s response was emphatic: “I will run for president.” His confidence is understandable, having emerged as the face of Nigeria’s youth movement in 2023. It would be an unjustifiable demotion for him to agree to serve as running mate in 2027 after doing so well in 2023. Again, power has to remain in the South, his refusal to back down shows a man who knows what he is doing and where he is going.
But his one-leg-in-one-leg-out romance with the opposition coalition is curious. Aside the fact that Atiku is the one behind it and he is not backing down on his lifetime ambition, many of these figures in the coalition are tied to the very political failures Obi decries. The contradiction was pointed out by the interviewer. Obi, in response, deployed a business analogy: that even failed companies produce experienced professionals who know what went wrong and whose experience can be useful in lifting other companies.
But governance is not corporate restructuring. National leadership involves political resistance, institutional inertia, public emotion, and constitutional limits. The idea that individuals who contributed to Nigeria’s decay can now become its fixers, without clear ideological alignment or reform plans, is, at best, wishful.
Obi’s ideas often draw from corporate logic: cut costs, save money, improve efficiency. Admirable principles, but not always practical in governance.
His popular decision to leave funds in Anambra’s coffers rather than invest them has been praised for fiscal discipline even though his successors dispute the figures. Again, he allegedly saved the money in a Bank where had majority shares.
But should a developing economy prioritise saving over strategic investment?
Similarly, his vow not to use a presidential jet appeals to public outrage over waste, but ignores security protocols and international diplomacy realities. Even leaders of smaller nations do not take such risks lightly.
In trying to govern like a CEO, Obi risks ignoring the complexities of Nigeria’s political economy, where constitutional bottlenecks, federal dynamics, and institutional weakness demand more than just cost-cutting.
Throughout the interview, Obi leaned heavily on generalities. He labelled the current government “incompetent” and promised to bring “civility and order” by strictly adhering to the Constitution. Yet, he failed to elaborate on how he would deliver tangible improvements in governance, security, or infrastructure beyond the moral framing.
One curious moment was his pledge to ensure the existence of a “strong opposition” if elected. It sounds noble but reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. In a democracy, governments don’t build opposition parties. Political opposition arises from dissent, ideology, and public trust, not presidential intervention.
Obi criticised the current administration for allegedly wasting funds renovating public infrastructure, vowing instead to “shut them down” if unnecessary. He declared he would shift Nigeria from a consuming to a producing nation. Yet, such transformation requires a robust industrial policy, energy reform, and a trade strategy. None were explained.
Similarly, his emphasis on production—without mentioning how to fix the power sector, enhance value chains, or address supply constraints—suggests an idealistic vision without the necessary scaffolding.
On how he would fix power, in his trademark ‘Afghanistanism,’ he referred the interviewer to Egypt and Vietnam and say he would do exactly what these countries did. Obi exposed himself as someone who had not read any literature on the power situation in Nigeria. He didn’t display any depth of knowledge or mastery of the problems or issues and mentioned his ideas that will change the situation. I didn’t hear of gencos or discos or whether the problem is from generation, distribution or transmission. He just said he would fix it in one term of four years even though he said it took Egypt five years to fix theirs. No concrete solutions. No specifics. Just high sounding familiar words.
In response to the pivotal question. Why should Nigerians trust you? Obi cited education and health as his focus. Human capital development is indeed crucial. But again, his remarks were light on specifics. There was no mention of how to fund education reforms, train teachers, revamp curricula, or expand healthcare access and infrastructure.
Every politician promises to improve education and health. Nigerians are now looking for the “how,” not just the “what.”
In the final analysis, Peter Obi’s performance on Channels TV was less of a policy address and more of a branding session. He presented himself as the honest, frugal, disciplined outsider, a welcome contrast to the status quo. But stripped of sentiment, many of his proposals face constitutional, institutional, and logistical barriers.
His corporate analogies may resonate with frustrated citizens but cannot substitute for comprehensive policy blueprints. Governance in Nigeria requires more than clean accounting, it demands inclusive strategies that consider ethnic tensions, poverty, and institutional fragility.
Obi has qualities that Nigerians admire: simplicity, passion, prudence. But admiration alone does not equate to readiness. To be truly presidential, he must bridge the gap between ethical rhetoric and executable policy. A businessman’s instinct is valuable, but Nigeria is not a business. It is a country in need of bold, yet pragmatic leadership.
Except he wants to hoodwink Nigerians by campaigning in poetry with a plan to govern in prose (apologies to late former Governor of Newyork, Mario Cuomo), he has to do better than saying the familiar things all politicians say. He must in subsequent interviews get down to the specifics – the how and when.
Arafat A. Abdulrazaq is a corps member serving with the Centre for Crisis Communication (CCC), Abuja. He can be reached via: [email protected].